AMD to Announce Massive Layoffs This Week

Struggling chip maker to issue pink slips to up to a third of its workforce, mainly targeting U.S. employees in platform engineering, SoC development, and sales, sources say.

Struggling Advanced Micro Devices will on Thursday announce massive layoffs that could see nearly a third of its workforce handed pink slips, sources with knowledge of the company's plans told PCMag this week.

The layoffs will primarily affect AMD's U.S. workforce and the downsizing will mainly target employees working in platform engineering, mobile and embedded chip development, and sales, said one source who asked not to be named.

The process will begin Thursday, the source said, and continue through Oct. 25. AMD announces its third-quarter earnings tomorrow and has already indicated that its results were poor over the past three months.

The company already underwent a round of layoffs that saw its workforce reduced by 10 percent between last November and the early part of this year.

AMD declined to comment. The company currently employs about 11,700 people worldwide.

The impending layoffs have also been reported by All Things D, Reuters, Semi-Accurate, CNET, and other media outlets in recent days. Accounts differ on the scale of the downsizing, with some outlets reporting that about 20 percent of the workforce will be let go and others saying the figure could be as high as 30 percent.

One PCMag source named the higher figure, which would mean around 3,500 AMD employees will be let go, while a second source said the layoffs would affect between 20 percent and 30 percent of the chip maker's workforce.

AMD has struggled in the past year under new management led by CEO Rory Read, whose tenure so far has been marred by disappointing quarterly performances and a series of executive defections, including last month's departure of CFO and one-time interim CEO Thomas Seifert.

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Japan Times, among other newspapers and periodicals.
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